June 2011 archive

Jun 23 2011

Visit to Slimbridge WWT : 23rd June 2011

Visit to Slimbridge WWT : 23rd June  2011

We were on our way to Montacute in Somerset for a wedding and we had stayed overnight at the Tudor Arms pub in Slimbridge village in order to break our journey up a bit and also to give us a chance to go to the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust centre there which we did in the morning. Unfortunately it was a bit wet and we did not have a huge amount of time so we concentrated on going to the hides. We seemed to forget the South Lake Observatory for some reason but we  did go to all the other hides and had a bit of a walk in the open part of the centre where the major attraction was (at a guess) around 100 Rooks making their Rookery in the trees surrounding the site but coming to the ground in a most confiding manner and happy to be within a couple of feet of the humans as long as it meant they could get at some of the duck food. We got some of the best views ever of Rooks at such close distance. Out at the Zeiss Hide we saw around a dozen Barnacle Geese among a lot of Crows in the fields and we could see a Buzzard overhead.

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Jun 22 2011

Visit to Arlingham and Slimbridge Village : 22nd June 2011

Visit to Arlingham and Slimbridge Village : 22nd June  2011

We were scheduled to attend a wedding on the 24th June at Montacute in Somerset so we decided to break up our journey by stopping off at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire. On our way there we took a bit of a detour to look at a restaurant,” The Old Passage” in Arlingham (also in Gloucester)This is situated on the edge of the River Severn in an oxbow of the river. We then drove from there along the Severn in the direction of Upper Framilode. We stopped for a while by a bend in the road to look at the birds on the edges of the estuary.  We were pleased to see what was for us the first colony of Sand Martins in a sandbank that were natural rather than man made. There were probably at least 40 Sand Martins flying around very near to us.

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Jun 21 2011

Birding Group Visit to Rixton Clay Pits : 21st June 2011

Birding Group Visit to Rixton Clay Pits : 21st June  2011

This week’s birding group visit was to Rixton Clay Pits, a former clay extraction point now turned over to angling and parts of it are a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The general feel of the area is scrubland / woodland with a big lake for angling and further smaller ponds. There are footpaths through the area and some walkways are being constructed as it is all rather damp underfoot for the main part. We spoke to a warden there who said that originally the area was part of the flood plain of the River Mersey and as a result there was a considerable amount of sand in the area as well as clay. When the clay extraction first took place some of this sand was excavated and then dumped to make small hillocks giving the area the appearance of being hollows and hillocks.

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Jun 18 2011

“The Secret Lives of Garden Birds” by Dominic Couzens

“The Secret Lives of Garden Birds” by Dominic Couzens

I came across a first edition hardback copy of this book at our local Oxfam shop so I only paid £3.99p for it which was quite a bargain. I mainly know of Dominic Couzens from his regular features in “Bird Watching” magazine where he specialises in articles about the “secret lives” or little known facts about both common and rarer species and also articles on bird identification. He is a very popular and enthusiastic populariser of bird ethology and this book is of this kind.

Couzens’ covers many of the topics surrounding the lives of garden birds including sections on biology, health, disease  and illness ; feeding ; pairing, bonding, nesting and breeding ; bird song and calls ; migration, weather and climate, population changes and many, many more fascinating topics surrounding the lives and trials of birds.

Where this  book differs, usefully, from other books on the same subjects is that these topics are covered under the structure of a month by month diary of the life of birds. This means that you can always have a quick reminder of the main conditions that will affect the birds that you can observe in your own garden as the year unfolds.

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Jun 16 2011

Day Out To RSPB Lake Vyrnwy Nature Reserve : 16 June 2011

Day Out To RSPB Lake Vyrnwy Nature Reserve : 16 June 2011

We had stayed the previous night at a hotel in LLongollen  because we had been on the Nightjar walk in the Coed LLandegla Forest until midnight so we didn’t want to travel back to Manchester late at night. This meant we had a chance to do something else we had been wanting to do for a while this day – that was to pay a visit to Lake Vyrnwy which was about an hour and a quarter away. We didn’t know a great deal about it but we had heard that it was good for birds and it proved to be very much the case.

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Jun 15 2011

Day Out To RSPB Coed Llandegla Forest : 15 June 2011

Day Out To RSPB Coed Llandegla Forest : 15 June 2011

We had heard about the RSPB walks at this forest when we were at RSPB Conwy where they had a leaflet about various attractions under the moniker “A date with nature”.  Two of these attractions took place at the  Coed Llandegla Forest near Llangollen in Wales. THE RSPB there organises morning trips to see Black Grouse and evening trips to see Nightjars. Taken by the latter prospect we booked two places for 15th June. We stayed at the White Waters Country Hotel in Llangollen, Denbighshire which had the virtue of being reasonably cheap but the room was not without its problems.

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Jun 07 2011

Birding Group Visit to Neumann’s Flash : 7th June 2011

Birding Group Visit to Neumann’s Flash : 7th June  2011

The weather held up for our birding group visit to Neumann’s Flash (part of the Northwich Woodland Area) and rained just a little towards lunchtime. As soon as we parked up we saw a Kestrel  high in the sky. As we waited for the others to arrive, we watched as it circled around in front of us before slowly coming down and hovering for a while. It then seemed to dive down and after a short while it came back up with something really quite large and furry (or fluffy !!) in its talons. It is possible that it had gone into a small tree and plucked a nestling out of a nest there. It is certainly true that as it reached the tree level a Magpie shot out of the tree quickly. If this is what it did, it probably dropped it on the ground and then picked it up again. It hovered around and flew off a couple of yards before settling back on the ground to have its meal.

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Jun 06 2011

Day Out To WWT Martin Mere : 6th June 2011

Day Out To WWT Martin Mere : 6th June 2011

A good day out at Martin Mere. We started off by going straight down to  hide H3 – the Ron Barker Hide where we saw a lot of the usual suspects. Particular birds of interest we saw were a single Whooper Swan. This was a lame bird who had not managed to migrate to Iceland with the other Whoopers in Spring.  We spoke to the chap at the “In Focus” shop and he said that it had sustained an injury to one of its wings and was quite badly damaged but the rangers had decided not to kill it since it didn’t seem to be in pain and eventually it had managed to recover reasonably well.  It wasn’t clear whether it was able to fly further than a short distance and as this is a first year bird it is not obvious either whether it will be able to migrate with the others when they again leave next spring.

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Jun 05 2011

Day Out To Lymm Dam : 5th June 2011

Day Out To Lymm Dam : 5th June 2011

We wanted a walk within a short drive from home  so we decided to go to Lymm Dam. The weather was a bit damp and a little rain fell from time to time but we were able to walk around the main part of the site without getting too wet. We walked from the car park (free) just off the A56 and walked along the east side of  Middle Dam along the wooded pathway where we immediately saw (and heard) a Song Thrush really low down in a tree so we got very good views. I also thought I saw a Nuthatch but it flew off so quickly I couldn’t claim it as a definite spot.

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Jun 04 2011

“Tracks and Signs of the Birds of Britain and Europe” by Roy Brown, John Ferguson, Michael Lawrence and David Lees .

“Tracks and Signs of the Birds of Britain and Europe” by Roy Brown, John Ferguson, Michael  Lawrence and David Lees .

I have just finished reading this fantastically detailed book. The title pretty much says it all – it is a field guide to help identify the habitats, remains and signs of life resulting from the presence of birds.  Really for ornithologists  in the field, it is nevertheless full of interesting information for the casual but interested reader. The chapters dealing with pellets, prey remains and skulls may be a bit specialist there is lots of fascinating information in the chapters dealing with bird nests, eggs and feathers that can help the casual observer make sense of things they may find or see in the natural environment.

“Tracks and Signs of the Birds of Britain and Europe” Roy Brown, John Ferguson, Michael  Lawrence and David Lees  Paperback: 336 pages. Publisher: Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd (Helm Identification Guides) (30 April 2003). ISBN-10: 0713653825. ISBN-13: 978-0713653823.